ONE LEVIATHAN YIELDED $100,000.
A Dirty-Looking Lump of Ambergris Is
Worth More Than Half Its
Weight in Gold.
Ambergris is one of the most valuable products of the sea. The mariner who spies floating on the waves a grayish mass, fatty in appearance, will, if he knows what ambergris is, betray considerable excitement, for the substance fetches high prices.
Captain James Earle, of New Bedford, Massachusetts, is said to have been the luckiest of all skippers in the old whaling days. From a single sperm whale he realized more than a hundred thousand dollars. It was not the ninety barrels of oil which gave the leviathan its extraordinary value, for that was sold for something like four thousand dollars; but within the whale's vast interior there was found a solid piece of ambergris weighing seven hundred and eighty pounds. This was sold in chunks in all markets of the world for about one hundred thousand dollars.
The finest piece, if not the largest, obtained in recent years weighed one hundred and sixty-three pounds. It was sold in London in 1891.
As to what ambergris is, we may quote the Philadelphia Saturday Evening post:
There is no longer any mystery as to the origin of ambergris. It is a morbid secretion due to a disease of the liver of the sperm whale, in the intestines of which animal lumps of it are occasionally, though rarely, discovered. Dr. C.H. Stevenson, of the United States Fish Commission, who has made a special study of the subject, says that the whales which yield ambergris are sickly and emaciated.
Anciently, the substance was known as amber—a name which was subsequently applied also to the fossil gum now commonly so called. But, to distinguish the two, one was called "amber gris" (gray), and the other "amber jaune" (yellow).
So it appears that ambergris means simply gray amber. Like the fossil gum, pieces of it were found now and then on the seashore, where they had been cast up by the waves; hence, doubtless, the giving of the same name to both.
The substance has been used for centuries in sacerdotal rites of the church, and with fragrant gums was formerly burned in the apartments of royalty. To some extent it was employed as a medicine and to flavor certain dishes. Nowadays it is utilized almost exclusively by perfumers, in the preparation of fine scents, being first converted into a tincture by dissolving it in alcohol.
ORIGIN OF HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT.
ANCIENT PARALLEL OF OUR JINGLE.
"A Kid! A Kid!" Sang the Hebrew
Children in Lieu of Our Parable from
the Pages of Mother Goose.
The sources of our nursery rhymes are many, and slowly to be traced out. Many of them have a lineage with serious historical meaning; others seem to have been suggested by the forms of more serious verses or parables.
Take "The House That Jack Built"; many sources and parallels have been dug out. The Kafirs of South Africa tell a story like it in form and substance. The most interesting parallel, however, is an ancient Hebrew parable called "The Two Zuzim," the summation of which is as follows:
[This is] the kid that my father bought for two zuzim.
[This is] the cat that ate the kid, etc.
[This is] the dog that bit the cat, etc.
[This is] the stick that beat the dog, etc.
[This is] the fire that burned the stick, etc.
[This is] the water that quenched the fire, etc.
[This is] the ox that drank the water, etc.
[This is] the butcher that slew the ox, etc.
[This is] the angel of death that killed the butcher, etc.
[This is] Yaveh, that vanquished the angel of death, etc.
Spartacus to the Gladiators at Capua.
BY ELIJAH KELLOGG.
It is Friday afternoon. The "scholars" of School Number Nine, having droned through a week of lessons, are beginning the "weekly exercises." Come visitors—Freddy Jones's mother and aunt, and William Groso's father, and the minister, and old Mrs. Huggins, who never misses the occasion, though she has no children of her own. Teacher, working into her voice an unwonted note of encouragement, calls the first name on the program, and Freddy Jones, his legs very stiff, marches to the platform, jerks his head toward teacher, and faces his mates. His legs are no longer stiff; on the contrary, his knee-joints seem to be made of whalebone. His mouth is dry and his forehead is clammy.
Freddy is not the biggest or strongest of the boys; he is not a leader among them. He has even been known to play with the girls. He is sandy as to hair and complexion, and stubby as to hands and feet and nose. Yet he begins: "Ye call me chief——"
How often, while practising the lines up in the attic, he has attained to an exalted sense of his leadership! How often he has leaned metaphorically upon his sword and surveyed with scornful contempt the fawning groundlings, the Roman Adonises, the shouting rabble! He was Spartacus then. But now—now he is a small boy with a doubtful memory; and mother, from the front row of benches, has to prompt him twice.
This thrilling old piece of declamation, this address of Spartacus to the Gladiators, was written by the Rev. Elijah Kellogg, who also wrote a great many books for boys—"The Elm Island Series," the "Pleasant Cove Series," the "Whispering Pine Series," and others which are still read. He was born in Portland, Maine, May 20, 1813; went to Bowdoin College and Andover Theological Seminary; served as a minister and chaplain from 1843 to 1865, and thereafter devoted himself almost exclusively to writing until his death, at Harpswell, Maine, March 17, 1901.
Ye call me chief; and ye do well to call him chief who for twelve long years has met upon the arena every shape of man or beast the broad Empire of Rome could furnish, and who never yet lowered his arm. If there be one among you who can say that ever, in public fight or private brawl, my actions did belie my tongue, let him stand forth and say it. If there be three in all your company dare face me on the bloody sands, let them come on. And yet I was not always thus—a hired butcher, a savage chief of still more savage men. My ancestors came from old Sparta, and settled among the vine-clad rocks and citron groves of Syrasella.
My early life ran quiet as the brooks by which I sported; and when, at noon, I gathered the sheep beneath the shade, and played upon the shepherd's flute, there was a friend, the son of a neighbor, to join me in the pastime. We led our flocks to the same pasture, and partook together our rustic meal. One evening, after the sheep were folded, and we were all seated beneath the myrtle which shaded our cottage, my grandsire, an old man, was telling of Marathon and Leuctra; and how, in ancient times, a little band of Spartans, in a defile of the mountains, had withstood a whole army.
I did not then know what war was; but my cheeks burned, I know not why, and I clasped the knees of that venerable man, until my mother, parting the hair from off my forehead, kissed my throbbing temples, and bade me go to rest, and think no more of those old tales and savage wars. That very night the Romans landed on our coast. I saw the breast that had nourished me trampled by the hoof of the war-horse—the bleeding body of my father flung amid the blazing rafters of our dwelling! To-day I killed a man in the arena; and, when I broke his helmet-clasps, behold! he was my friend. He knew me, smiled faintly, gasped, and died—the same sweet smile upon his lips that I had marked, when, in adventurous boyhood, we scaled the lofty cliff to pluck the first ripe grapes, and bear them home in childish triumph!
I told the prætor that the dead man had been my friend, generous and brave; and I begged that I might bear away the body, to burn it on a funeral pile, and mourn over its ashes. Aye! upon my knees, amid the dust and blood of the arena, I begged that poor boon, while all the assembled maids and matrons, and the holy virgins they call Vestals, and the rabble, shouted in derision, deeming it rare sport, forsooth, to see Rome's fiercest gladiator turn pale and tremble at sight of that piece of bleeding clay! And the prætor drew back as if I were pollution, and sternly said, "Let the carrion rot; there are no noble men but Romans." And so, fellow gladiators, must you, and so must I, die like dogs.
O, Rome! Rome! thou hast been a tender nurse to me. Aye! thou hast given to that poor, gentle, timid shepherd lad, who never knew a harsher tone than a flute-note, muscles of iron and a heart of flint; taught him to drive the sword through plaited mail and links of rugged brass, and warm it in the marrow of his foe—to gaze into the glaring eyeballs of the fierce Numidian lion, even as a boy upon a laughing girl! And he shall pay thee back, until the yellow Tiber is red as frothing wine, and in its deepest ooze thy life-blood lies curdled!
Ye stand here now like giants, as ye are! The strength of brass is in your toughened sinews, but to-morrow some Roman Adonis, breathing sweet perfume from his curly locks, shall with his lily fingers pat your red brawn, and bet his sesterces upon your blood. Hark! hear ye yon lion roaring in his den? 'Tis three days since he has tasted flesh; but to-morrow he shall break his fast upon yours—and a dainty meal for him ye will be! If ye are beasts, then stand here like fat oxen, waiting for the butcher's knife! If ye are men, follow me!
Strike down yon guard, gain the mountain passes, and there do bloody work, as did your sires at old Thermopylæ! Is Sparta dead? Is the old Grecian spirit frozen in your veins, that you do crouch and cower like a belabored hound beneath his master's lash? O comrades! Warriors! Thracians! If we must fight, let us fight for ourselves! If we must slaughter, let us slaughter our oppressors! If we must die, let it be under the clear sky, by the bright waters, in noble, honorable battle!
THE AVERAGE AGES OF ANIMALS.
The Elephant and the Whale Dispute the Record for Longevity, With the Camel Third.
Elephants are perhaps the longest-lived members of the animal kingdom, averaging between one hundred and two hundred years.
It is said that when Alexander conquered India he took one of King Porus's largest elephants, named Ajax, and turned him loose with this inscription, "Alexander, the son of Jupiter, dedicated Ajax to the sun," and that this elephant, bearing this inscription, was captured three hundred and fifty years later.
Most naturalists allow the whale about the same length of life as the elephant—from a century to two centuries; but Cuvier declared that some whales, at least, attain the age of a thousand years.
The average ages of other animals are as follows:
| Years. | |
| Ass | 30 |
| Bear | 20 |
| Camel | 75 |
| Cat | 15 |
| Cow | 15 |
| Deer | 20 |
| Dog | 14 |
| Fox | 14 |
| Goat | 12 |
| Guinea-pig | 4 |
| Hare | 8 |
| Hippopotamus | 20 |
| Horse | 25 |
| Hyena | 25 |
| Jaguar | 25 |
| Leopard | 25 |
| Lion | 40 |
| Monkey | 17 |
| Mouse | 6 |
| Ox | 30 |
| Pig | 15 |
| Rabbit | 7 |
| Rat | 7 |
| Rhinoceros | 20 |
| Sheep | 10 |
| Squirrel | 8 |
| Tiger | 25 |
| Wolf | 20 |